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waynedunlaptheorgandonor · 3 years

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can i say a sort of pointless rambly thing i was thinking about that i can't put under the cut bc i'm on mobile?

jk, i'm not actually asking. ramble below, not edited for clarity. the following is completely unclear and i will not fix it:

i've been thinking about how part of the reason i'm so chill about caryl is bc growing up as a queer woc 99% of my main ships were like, never gonna fucking happen bc they literally couldn't. it was like, "omg, they gazed at each other from across the room, let's analyze the homosexual subtext of this one scene for the next fifty years, that's not necessarily hyperbole." i've watched all my ships fuck other ppl/have other love interests, and i knew that my thing was never gonna be canon, so to see like, one thing being like, "one half of my ship fucked another person several years ago while pining for the other half of my ship," i'm like...#nice, bc that can and likely will be used as a plot point to get them together later on, whereas in other situations i've been in i just kinda had to deal with it. so my impulse when i see ppl losing their shit is to be like

and to be slightly annoyed, tbh, bc the ship is still on track to be canon, and it's like, literally two white heterosexuals, they're prime candidates for juicy angsty pining that actually gets a resolution.

but!

that being said, i recognize that that attitude isn't necessarily fair. for one thing, i'm not the only queer woc (or some variation thereof) in this fandom, and some ppl's impulse might be exasperation instead, bc like, "wtf, even my mayohet ship has dumb fucking drama," and that's valid as hell, and i get it.

and also, i get that, even if you didn't grow up shipping impossible ships (or mulder/scully, bc that's a brand of bullshit all its own), this has been a suuuuper drawn out process where sometimes it feels like they're legit sprinkling crumbs to keep you hooked, just to play you again, and when you are invested in something, like /rly/ invested, especially if it's a form of escapism or hyperfixation or whatever, that can be e x h a u s t i n g. and i get that. i truly do, and while i make a lot of snide comments about the fandom being bonkers, i do get where the bulk of you are coming from (unless you're one of those ppl who hate on actors and esp actresses for just doing their jobs, and attack them on social media, in which case i am very much judging you and you need to get your life together).

i also realize that in the scheme of things i'm still a newbie. i've been here, what, twoish/threeish years, whereas some of you have been here since the beginning, so i'm not as worn out as y'all. but i also think that gives me a bit of objectivity that some of y'all have (understandably) lost.

my positivity is not meant as a sleight against those of you who are feeling negative, but is more of a semi-objective viewpoint (i say semi, bc lbr, i'm invested af in this, so i definitely have bias), and to me the threads of the storyline they're crafting seem sort of obvious.

like, let's look at it, yeah? they have one season left of this show that has been on for over a decade. they need to cater to everyone to give them a satisfying ending, while still hanging on to carylers bc of the spin-off. darylrreah seems like a very calculated move, bc it gives them both something to make abcers happy, while also creating tension and suspense and pining for carylers (i think they might underestimate just how fed up some carylers are tbh, and are banking on us to hang on for one last ride, which, honestly? if they play it right will probably work.)

if they end up doing a dumb love triangle thing, which, without seeing the episode and gauging the subtext i can't confidently say if i think they will or won't, it will ultimately end in our favor. it has to, bc leah isn't going to third wheel them on the bike in the spin-off. we can say with good authority that whatever that relationship ends up being (again, idk if they'll drag it out or not) it will be temporary. which leaves caryl open to ride off into the sunset and then bone down in every state in the united states and in puerto rico for good measure.

it's a lot of cheap drama, but i really and truly do not think it's anything to worry about, and i still really and truly trust kang to not make it out of character. ik ppl still don't agree with me on that point, and i'm not gonna argue, but to me it really does make perfect sense.

and i also predict that they are gonna play it up hardcore in the promotional shit and talking dead, but when that happens, remember it's bc it gets attention. regardless of where the story is ultimately going, relationship drama gets attention, which gets viewers, which gets amc and twd producers nice and comfy with full pockets

idk. to sum up ig i just wanted to clarify that i don't mean any harm with my relentless positivity. my history in fandom has just made this seem like nothing in comparison, bc while ppl are freaking out, i'm like, "oh damn, they're actually gonna get together by the end of this, aren't they? i didn't know that could happen!" and that makes me excited instead of upset

and you definitely don't have to listen to me. maybe i'm actually wrong. maybe i'm completely full of bullshit and am just good at making things sound confident. i got a lot of As on papers in college over books i never read, i know how to bs. but i also know how to analyze, and i while i will be the first to tell you i am not the best at a great many things, i do know that i am good at critically analyzing text while taking into account the context it was written in, and imho all signs point to canon caryl. when, i'm not entirely sure, but i see it happening. if it doesn't then they severely fucked up their storytelling, and that'd just be bad writing on their part.

(if you want proof that i'm good at reading writers'/producers' intentions, consider that i watched like, 8 seasons of supernatural before giving up, and said to myself, "i think they're gonna make destiel canon, but not until the very last second bc they are rly into catering to their fans but also have to consider their dumb fanboy audience so they can't do anything crazy overtly gay," and guess who hit the nail on the fucking head on that one)

none of this is important, but it was rattling around my mind grapes and i wanted to write it down into something vaguely coherent, and where else better to do it than here. i can word vomit and then send it into the ether and pretend i never said a thing. i love this horrible website, nothing can compare

i have no real conclusion to this, it was mostly stream of consciousness, but i hope it sort of helps y'all understand where i'm coming from, and why i am as chill as i am about things. not about y'all. y'all cause me so much anxiety i get physically sick and have to legit block tags, but with the actual show content i'm zen as hell

the end ig?

it feels weird even signing off on this, but w/e

-diz

#idk #caryl #caryl positivity #caryl spoilers #twd s10 spoilers #dunlap tp

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heeres-suffering · 4 years

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Be More Alluring: a Personality Swap AU

[pic description and source will be at the bottom of this post, under the read more]

Start of summary:

“You need to be more alluring.”

"... don’t you mean attractive?”

“I do not. Your attractiveness is adequate, Brooke; if you want to mask your apparently latent queerness, you have to make them want you straight. Isn’t that why your step-father defended you?”

Brooke Lohst is a loser.

But you know what? That was okay.

She always knew she was a weird one. The intensity of her affection for puppies, picture books, and near-constant daydreaming has lasted well-past a normalcy she can’t seem to grasp; when coupled with her inability to befriend anyone (besides the similarly self-identified loser Michael Mell), it’s not a surprise the rest of her peers have left her behind.

However, there were... ah, worse things in her life to worry about then some mild bullying. She liked her passion well enough, and all of her true insecurities went largely unnoticed, so any insults or weird looks rarely lingered in her mind. It’s not like she was a constant target either, which helped a lot. All in all, she just planned to hunker down, wait out the awkwardness of High School like everyone else, and move on to the rest of her life...

Except.

When Brooke develops a crush on a girl she’s never talked to, after years of avoiding fairy tale romance and trying not to think about the inevitability of marriage (or how finicky her attraction to boys is in the first place), it feels like her whole world is about to cave in. She’d do anything to make sure her parents, especially daddy, never find out... including buying an edible super computer from the loudest, tiniest guy in school.

End of summary.

Alright!

Hi, hello, it’s Mod Seb, and here’s an AU I’ve been rolling around for a few days! You are free to do with this concept whatever you want, but I wanted to introduce it with a good chunk of the info I’ve already worked out in my head.

So. As the CWs are... too numerous, I’m going to go with a blanket “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” label and encourage you not to read the rest of this if you have any big darkfic triggers that could be upset by mere mention; this isn’t a fic tho, so descriptions of anything awful won’t last long.

Although, I will mention upfront that Brooke isn’t a binary lesbian. I know the description might read like I’m setting her up to be 100% homosexual; she’s bi with a strong preference for girls, and anyone who presents soft enough in gender or appearance. If it wasn’t for the end-game pairings, her unfamiliarity with smaller details/history of the LGBTQ+ community, and general “gay newb” status, she’d likely ID as a bi lesbian!

(ships and everything else under the Read More)

Okay. That out of the way, there’s quite a number of pairings; I’m pretty sure it’s a super polyamorous and sexual AU, though you’re free to change this list as much as you’d like:

[bolded are end-game ships. italics physically hook up at least once. strike-through means they were in a relationship but break-up in some way before the ending. (H) stands for healthy, while (T) is toxic and/or noncon. underlined characters are pining for the other and may never confess their true feelings]

Brooke/Christine (H), Brooke/Rich (H), Brooke/Jenna (H), Brooke/Michael (H), Brooke/Chloe (T), Brooke/her Daddy (T), Brooke/Squip (H), Brooke/Jeremy (soft T at first bc of mirrored canon-compliant manipulation, H later on), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy (H), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy/Rich (H), Rich/Moses (H), [insert every form of Rich/Mo/Squip/Jeremy here] (H), Jeremy/Chloe (T), Jeremy/Michael (H), Michael/Christine (H), Michael/Christine/Mr. Heere (H; no, seriously), Madeline/Brooke (H)

This is, of course, a role swap AU where Brooke and Jeremy trade places based on my personal lore for their home lives. I always have some pretty fucked ideas as I don’t imagine MB is a great place with great adults, and I pick and choose which parts of canons I use and which I don’t.

There is no definite ending planned in mind as this isn’t an outline; it’s meta (or an imagine or w/e) for an AU that you’re free to do whatever with.

So,

The big difference is that Brooke was picked by Michael, while Jeremy was picked by Chloe. Jeremy is trans and hadn’t come out yet; if Chloe had known he was a boy, she wouldn’t have grabbed him. In contrast, Michael’s never gave a shit about potential friends genders.

Jer and B’s personalities... are altered some. Not ALL the way, but kiiinda fusing into their roles, kinda tweaked (I'll get back to that).

The main point of this for me was Brooke/Squip/Jeremy, with B/Jer having a MUCH stronger focus than in canon, and a really bad Chloe acting as one of the major villains.

Michael gets roped into Chloe’s shit, even tho he's still generally a good guy here, bc he's worried about B and thinks she can't properly take care of herself.

While B DOES have a strong crush on Christine, she’s the opposite of the Squip’s “goal”; that’s (obvs) masking, or making passably digestible, her queerness.

Her Mom and step-’Daddy’ have reacted to her friendship w/ ‘openly gay moms, also very flamboyant and GNC’ Michael... poorly.

Michael thinks the solution has to be “act as aggressively yourself as you can, and if they reject you, you know me and the mom’s have a space for you”. This works for him bc he’s permanently hyper-visible, what with all of his own marginalized identities. But, not only has she flied under the radar in comparison to him for years, he doesn’t know everything about her life.

In fact, he doesn’t know most of it. She’s very good at hiding things.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, one of the more popular ‘boy... ish’ (we’ll get to this, too) people in school, is mid-psychosis and self-destruction. He actually has schizo-affective disorder--as is the case with all of my versions of Jeremy--which he needs medication for. Combined that with so many bad influences and trauma, he can no longer fully control himself or his life.

The way he handles this (badly) is to ‘whore around’--which, besides being Chloe’s pet, is kinda why he’s so popular. Nobody respects him, but he’s viewed some form of favorably.

Jeremy is in a relationship with Rich, but he won't let him get as close/protective as Rich wants; Mo and Rich were doing their own man-whoring (but healthy, just droppin’ panties and making dudes and chicks swoon--yeah, Rich is out as bisexual, this is a very ‘the Squips are a good thing’ AU) to gain their standard reputation, but in the course of that, they got together with Jeremy and it became... complicated. Both of them are very "nnn" about how bad his life is for Jer.

The way that their personalities are altered is... okay. To explain this, I have to talk about my characterization of canon-Brooke and Jeremy in relation to this, starting with Brooke:

I imagine B as just a liiittle below the line of "all the way there" for sorta-similar reasons to Jeremy here: trauma, and Chloe (which is why that’s what Jeremy gets in this, it’s just WAY worse when compounded by everything else). She’s also--like me, and like almost every character I write as a result--autistic, in a near-permanent state of “not enough accommodations” and over-stimulation. This leads to a lot of dissociation and a very wandering mind, as well as being perceived as a bimbo or dumb blonde or w/e misogynistic bullshit is projected onto her by the boys she dates (she’s also much more down the middle bi outside this AU).

So, going back to how she is for this AU: she's actually not super nerdy, despite the close connection she and Michael have. Honestly, it’s their general neurodivergent weirdness that bring them together, and so she’s mostly adopted her nerdy interests through him, whether directly a thing he likes, or finding a whimsical variant that fits her tastes.

Obviously, unlike Jeremy, she doesn’t mind being called a loser. She does any insinuation she might be queer. This including anyone who calls her gay or a dyke.

She has too much Cis Male Trauma (unlike canon, where it comes from both cis angles) to really entertain the idea of a Traditionally Male Partner. This means she skews HEAVILY towards hard GNC guys at the very least, and generally finds herself most interested in the idea of enbies and women. she's also not super into butches tho, bc her trauma mixing with her sexuality has latched on to Strong Masc People Are A Threat.

An expansion on her interests, in canon and otherwise: animals, ASMR/sensual service work (including massages and stuff), spending hours just sorta sitting by herself and letting her imagination wander, fairy tales, and YA-and-under fantasy books.

(Here, she tries to avoid het or f/f romance... except that, this past year or two, she’s started really like m/m stuff--esp after getting REALLY into drag shows, which she could enjoy safely since girls like Chloe have gotten into them too; in canon, she’s a romance fanatic)

Now... this is one of the really darkfic element; she's fucking her step-dad.

She does this so that he doesn't walk out on her, her mom, and her little sister*. Her mom has a good-enough job as a standard office woman, but he makes enough to pay the rent on their nice townhouse and all the bills she can’t. So, after he expressed interest in Brooke and then casually mentioned he could always just leave if she wasn’t comfortable, she reluctantly entered a relationship with him

(* = her sister is currently know as her brother; he’s like 12 or 13, and started showing signs of trans/queerness which have been Heavily Discouraged. Brooke worries about him a lot)

((I didn’t use she/her pronouns bc I’m not entirely sure he would change them? This is an OC Oli created at the beginning of our interest in BMC, and we haven’t worked on him at all since, so how his characterization will be is up in the air))

Canonically, Brooke's "in love" with her daddy, which is a self-imposed delusion; if she actually addressed it, she’d says she’s well aware that’s not true, but it's so much easier to pretend when you’re cornered like that. Brooke’s life blows.

She’s a lot more honest to herself about hating him here; still, she tries to be as polite and generally-friendly as she can, doing what he says whenever he wants.

OKAY, THAT’S BROOKE. If any of that is badly described or potentially-offensive, it’s just bc I glossed over SO MUCH DETAIL, even in that amount of it!

So. Jeremy.

I don’t have to go over him much and we’re all mostly aware of how I feel about him and also I don’t have the energy to do this again--

(just... read my fics The Devil at your Door or hello yesterday or something... eyyy actually do that, my ao3 username is Sedusa, blah blah blah ANYWAY)

--but basically: He's still very nerdy, like, he’s super into film as well as video games (which is another constant for me), but after being largely ignored in elementary, he's been trailing behind Chloe at her orders since they were in 6th grade. As a result he isn't very open about... any of his interests.

In 7th grade, he came out as trans to everyone. Chloe was furious, but at the same time, intrigued; this was around the time Chloe gets her own... ah shit I gotta go into that too--

--yet another hc of mine is that Chloe gets a Squip on accident around this time at a party (there was one in a “”candy bowl””), and from there, she claws her way up the ladder. I... will not go into that much, but her Squip was crippled by the drugs and alcohol in her system, and therefore largely at her mercy. She’s used his power to manipulate certain things about herself and to sharpen her focus on popularity to the point she’s full-blown Alpha Bitch.

Man, I’ve had to go on so many tangents, I apologize.

Anyway, she drags Jeremy around as a punching bag. She constantly mocks Jeremy's transness, even though she usually calls him by his correct name and pronouns.

This has made the rest of the school follow her lead, hence why I said “boy-ish”; he’s popular, he’s technically ‘well liked’, but nobody really takes him seriously. This is compounded by Chloe’s refusal to let him dress in 'dorky' casual clothes, and, as he’s both too poor to afford designer clothes and also generally hates popular guy fashion, he has to wear the hyper femme clothing Chloe specifically tells him too/

As such, people call him a boy but largely see him as either an idiot, a slut, an attention seeker, or all of the above.

So of course, in Brooke's place, his neurodivergence is more prominent than ever; every day he slips further into this psychosis and self-infantilization haze, as his his mom leaving, his dad severely depressed, Chloe's sexual violence, and other repressed trauma (see: my fic hello yesterday on ao3) all weighing on him. This makes him INCREDIBLY regressed, like, all the time by Junior year.

And then Brooke's Squip (IE: canon Squip) falls in love with Jeremy extremely fucking hard. He pushes her to date him as a way to compromise on her queer desires, since Jeremy is technically a boy, and certainly a few other straight-ish girls have hooked up with him in the past.

WHEW. That is a fucking lot. To wrap this up, lemme go over the interpersonal relationships not already mentioned, and what directions I think it takes.

First off, Madeline has a more prominent role, as I quite like her tbh; she’s a sex worker, she has her own Squip, she’s one of Chloe’s most hated enemies, and she gravitates towards both Brooke and Jeremy. She’s also Actually French, Chloe’s just weird.

(Anyway she prolly sees through Brooke’s straight act and asks her why she’s pretending to be a good little cishet. It rattles Brooke.)

Chloe is scum. This bears repeating. She DEFINITELY rapes Brooke at the Halloween party, and becomes obsessed with her, along with already being obsessed with Jeremy and Jake.

Jake, by the way, has a lot of regressive behavior and impulsiveness bc he’s been in an abusive relationship off and on with Chloe for years now.

Speaking of Jake, moving on to his best bro: Rich doesn’t set himself on fire. He’s having a good time with his Squip.

But.

He IS set on fire at the Halloween party.

Instead of the Smartphone Hour being about Rich's instability, it's actually about the mystery of Someone Did It To Him But No One Saw Who It Was, They Were Disguised.

The answer relates to the fact that Rich and Brooke are ALSO hooking up, after she’s already with Jeremy, bc he Properly introduces her to him and the three of them hit it off really well.

(She initially wasn’t interested, but while Rich is loud and still kinda abrasive, his Squip doesn’t drive him to act like a bully--and in private, his nerdiness is really obvious and he’s extremely gentle with her and Jeremy. Add to that that he’s bi and trans*, when Brooke connects best w/ queer men over cishet one, and it off-sets his masc-ness enough to make him an Exception.

* = I always imagine him as trans. See: all of Vanceypants fics.)

Sooo... the culprit is actually Brooke's daddy, who sees her with this obvious heartthrob and Cannot let that be.

Chloe convinces Michael that the Squips are Very Very Bad and has him team up with her to force Brooke into drinking Red, with the intention to convince him to kill himself after to get him out of the way, bc she’s really going nuts at this point.

Eventually, he snaps out of it when he and Christine get together (he’s thought he was Full Homo all of his life, but Christine’s prolly genderqueer-ness makes him realize “oh shit, I’m bisexual”) and she starts to question why he’s acting the way he is towards Christine.

He also definitely has a crush on Jeremy and during his time with Chloe he kinda tried to flirt a little but couldn’t really... he’s not up for dating someone as sexually active and a push-over as Jeremy is in this.

However, when he snaps out of Chloe’s manipulation, he and Christine approach Mr. Heere to convince him to straighten up and help Jeremy and also bc they really need an adult to successfully fight Chloe.

This requires a month+ of Christine getting him to see her psychiatrist (the one who prescribes her ADHD meds). Jeremy spends the majority of his time staying with Chloe, and very rarely comes home to gather things or to make sure his dad is eating/still alive, as much as he can remember to in his own haze of mental illness. Anyway, point is, he doesn’t know Christine and Michael are there often... not that, in the course of growing close to Mr. H, they both fall for him hard and it becomes one of my stranger OT3s.

(God, Jeremy goes through a lot of shit in this, tho.)

Pre-Squip, Jenna was kinda-sorta Brooke’s friend--or, well, friendly. However, she’s actually full blown “oh my God she’s wonderful” in love with Brooke.

Brooke isn't aware of that, esp since Jenna tries her not to be around her a lot. She's also trying to hide her own queerness, bc she’s a trans woman and she knows Chloe finding that out would be extremely dangerous.

Eventually, Chloe succeeds in making Brooke take the Red months after canon usually ends, w/o Michael’s help. If you’re curious, Red doesn’t affect her normal Squip bc she’s had him too long and a lot of his receptors and stuff are damaged, so it’s the second one she gets in canon that turns off.

This plan backfires, however, as Brooke’s Squip comes back with a physical body w/ help from Rich and also-bodied-now Moses.

With a body, and shenanigans, Mo and Squip take out Brooke’s daddy too. His life insurance more than makes up for the loss of his income, as it’s a sizable amount. Now that Brooke feels more empowered and strong, she overrides her mother’s neglectfulness and takes control of the household w/ her boyfriends*, comes out as queer, helps her sister transition, and begin to heal from all of this trauma.

(* = Rich and Mo move in, as does Jeremy eventually, after graduation; Jeremy gets a psychiatrist and a therapist and prolly has to go through some intense outpatient care and possibly a stay in the hospital, before finally making major breakthroughs and looking like himself again. The five of them are now happy and in love.)

Chloe, after her arm gets twisted by the Squip’s protective presence so thoroughly, gives up on Jeremy and Brooke to focus on Jake. This too gets abandoned when Rich and Mo help him cut her off, and so she stays in her own popularity bubble, bitter, until graduating and going to a community college in a different state.

All in all, things work out well in the end, but getting there is a long, difficult process. This AU fascinates me immensely and feels like a great way to examine some of my really dark headcanons about MB, as I think it’s a town similar to Derry in Stephen King’s IT--as in, just chronically The Worst Place Ever, with this, like, miasma of low-key despair around it. People adjust and don’t question it, which is why so much of BMC is this flippant dark humor in the face of some highly questionable shit.

I’m so sorry this post is so long (I’ll be uploading it to AU under my usual Sedusa account, as metas like this are more than allowed), but I really adore these characters and the way they can be twisted around, so I had a lot to say!

Thank you for reading <3

-mod Seb

image description: virtual-like stairs pointed forward and bathed in neon yellow and blue to represent Brook and Jeremy, which I’ve modified from the original blue-only design.

source: x (link description: a free Wallpaper Flare image that I found off Google Image’s “filtered by ‘labeled and reuse with modification” feature)

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trisockatops · 6 years

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tl;dr My birthday is coming up and I’ve had a really shitty time esp mental health wise. I have an amazon wishlist and a paypal/me (I guess etsy wishlists are just for yourself); only if you want and have the money and have the inclination, a birthday gift would be so much appreciated. I’d also take messages on my inbox here on tumblr. x3. <3

So the past year and a half (actually... more) have really fucking sucked. I was having a blast doing my Master’s until suddenly one of my co-advisors actually became involved with the project and would spend whole hour and a half meetings just criticizing and insulting me. He’d ask me to do things and then yell at me for doing them because it annoyed him. And my advisor would sit there and say nothing and let him. The only people at our school and major who EVER had their defenses/theses rejected had massive scientific flaws in reasoning. My co-advisor just didn’t like the way I wrote one of my sections, even though my logic was fine and he’d had plenty of time for editing suggestions, and rejected my defense/thesis, meaning I didn’t get to graduate. I then had to finish editing (which involved major re-writes) on my own while no longer getting paid and trying to job search. I had applied for a phD program where the potential advisor I was talking to had guaranteed I’d get a spot, except when I submitted my research proposal I was suddenly and randomly rejected by the school and even trying several rounds to hear back about what had happened and if there was something I should address better in the future, found myself ignored by everyone. So I went from being assured to entering a doctorate program to suddenly having nothing. I didn’t have the time to plan on a backup while writing my thesis and working on my doctorate proposal.

I planned on staying with my parents until I officially graduated, but a few months turned into close to two years now. I’ve submitted applications to too many jobs to count but because I don’t really know anyone in the industry, I’m just not hearing anything back. I don’t even get rejection notices most the time. I tried getting my substitute teacher license but they’re awarded between two offices who don’t communicate, so I got hung up several times as my application stalled for no reason. It took so long to get anywhere that my application is no longer valid, which means I wasted $50 on a background check for nothing because even though our district desperately needs subs and teachers, they don’t actually want to have to do the work of hiring them.

I got paid a little to get my wildlands firefighting certification but then got an interview with WalMart. Due to how much time and energy WM took (even though it went against my availability, I was often scheduled for things like working until 12:30 am and then starting at 8 am the next day with a half hour’s travel time one direction), I couldn’t keep up on strength training, so couldn’t apply for firefighting. Only I went from interacting with like two people a day to suddenly interacting with thousands of people a day and handling really gross money and raw meat and shit. I was basically sick for the entire three months I was there with different flu strains (I have asthma, so I stay sick for a long time even in the best circumstances). Even being sick the entire time, I only missed a couple of days. But as a new employee at WM, you’re only allowed two absences (even though you should be part time, you’re technically not, though being part time would really have helped with recovery time...), so I was fired. Nobody even bothered telling me I was fired. No call. No forewarning. I had to ask around to find what was going on. By the smiles on their faces, the HR team clearly knew I was fired but for some reason couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me themselves, just sent me on a wild goose chase for someone who could actually tell me.

Other than that, I got paid a bit to help edit a book and a couple times for house&petsitting. But even living with my parents, I’ve still ofc been losing money to gas costs and food and such. And honestly, for my own mental health, I NEED to move out. While not Trump republicans, they’re still republicans and most conversations with them are a battle. And this is nothing in comparison, but without insurance my acne meds were $400, so my acne has returned, of which my mom often comments on in a negative way (that she thinks is helpful no matter how many times I tell her my acne is ugly but not painful).

It’s been really disheartening to have so little response from potential employers (even people I chat with via phone or email don’t give me a response to my application unless I specifically seek them out and get told a bullshit rejection line about having great qualifications but them going another way) and between everything happening, my depression has just been getting worse and worse.

Literally just last week my friend helped get me a surprise job with her husband, which is a customer service rep for an office supplier. It’s a little above minimum wage but still not really enough to be able to move out, especially considering the carjacking rate in town where I’d move to in order to be closer to the job.

Plus I almost lost my birth control and would have started my period after close to a year of not having one thanks to losing my parent’s insurance and mine being really fucking shitty and not wanting to have to pay for an appointment, so I had a HUGE breakdown in front of my mom, who confronted me about my depression and basically lectured me for letting things get so far and spoke at me instead of to me and having all that come out in front of her was really just... awful and hard to process and deal with.

So, yeah. Generally just been feeling shitty about myself and my situation and not having anyone I can really turn to has made for a terrible year and a half and a general worsening of my mental health.

So only if you want and have the money and have the inclination, a birthday gift would be so much appreciated. I have an amazon wishlist and a paypal/me (I guess etsy wishlists are just for yourself). I also enjoy astrology/tarot/palm reading/energy readings. I’d also take messages on my inbox here on tumblr. x3

#me #long post #birthday #wishlist #birthday wishlist #depression #mental health #i know a lot of my mutuals and followers are in super similar positions #so absolutely don't feel bad if you literally can't #don't feel bad if you just plain don't want either #i really don't expect anything #it's just nice to get it out there sometimes

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autisticskunk-blog · 7 years

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I’m Like Literally Two Seconds Away From A Panic Attack So

I just....I’m done. I can’t stop shaking.

I’ve read at least two responses to that Jewish Graves post that are directed at me, idk if any of the others are, cuz I can’t tell. I know there’s at least one more I was @ ed at in, but I’m still figuring out Tumblr, and can’t figure out how tf to actually read it, I just know a whole bunch of ppl (I’m assuming all in that thread) were @ ed in it.

I am literally seconds away from crying. My mast cells are flaring, too, so my whole face is just /hot/. I don’t fucking get it. I don’t know how I could’ve been any fucking clearer.

I don’t know how I could’ve been any fucking clearer that /all/ I was trying to do was acknowledge that, while the person saying it (I do not have the energy to look up names right now) def seemed out of line to me (a bystander), one part (just one!! literally just one!!) aspect of ppl’s response seemed also out of line.

I have tried as hard as possible to avoid discourse of any kind, cuz frankly, I have nowhere near the mental health or spoons necessary to endure it. I’m frankly completely and utterly sick of all the discourse, ace discourse, kink discourse, all of it, cuz it all boils down to ppl being exclusionists, which I am actively against.

But I don’t have the energy to actively discuss it, cuz, as I’m sure all of you know, it’s a fucking dumpster fire. Ppl are nasty and terrifying. See: Me, in that post, probably over emphasizing how uninvolved I am and would like to stay, cuz I’m fucking terrified of getting utterly destroyed over the tiniest possible misstep.

But I saw something, one /fucking/ thing, that seemed clear cut to me, that seemed easy enough to address without potentially bringing down fucking hellfire on myself for it. One thing that seems frankly completely unrelated to the actual discussion, and therefore safe for me (a bystander) to speak up about.

I still don’t get it. I don’t /fucking/ get it. I still don’t fucking see how a comparison that boils down to ‘rectangle vs square’ is so fucking awful. Is comparing jewish ppl to dogs (which as far as I can see it clearly wasn’t, more like comparing /ppl in general/ to dogs, and different groups of ppl to different /breeds/ of dogs) really that widespread of a thing? Like, that, specifically, comparing jewish ppl to dogs?

Cuz if so, okay, I can get being upset about things similar to that, even if they aren’t actually the same. And I could get that, combined with that person’s overall statements, coming off as very antisemitic (which I never even put into doubt, I literally just spoke on that specific statement).

And I also absolutely get that using ‘normal’ to mean ‘non jewish’ is kinda shitty. I’m not gonna argue that it’s utterly horrible, cuz as shitty as it is, using ‘normal’ as a term at all can be shitty, and is still something the general public (esp those who aren’t used to/familiar with oppression and marginalized identities) tends to use as a default. But I get that’s there’s justified anger there.

I was /not/ trying to derail anything. I literally don’t understand how it seems like everything I said is somehow being taken as a hell of a lot more underhanded than it is. I tried my absolute fucking best to make it clear that I was not weighing in on /anything/ but the dogs vs ppl topic, and that I did /not/ want to get involved in, really, any of it. I even considered just making a separate post for it, but that didn’t seem like it made sense.

I’m just....idfk, I’m done. Thank you to that person (again, can’t remember names, but the person I defended, them) for being so nice. I def don’t agree with you on some of these things, and obvs there are other ppl directly hurt by them who can decide for themselves whether you’re forgiven and all that (again, I am /not/ interested in getting involved), but I at least appreciate your shoutout, esp in the midst of all this stress.

I’m just done. I’m crying, I’ve probably taken 15 minutes or more to write this and I still can’t stop shaking. I never expected it to be ppl whose side I’m on to be the ones that made Tumblr too fucking much for me, but there it is.

Consider this blog officially back on hiatus (even tho I never ‘officially’ came back from my last one). It’s too fucking much. I can’t stop crying, I can’t stop shaking, and I’m utterly exhausted by how scared and tense I am just from anti kink bullshit right now, let alone getting directly targeted and torn to fucking shreds.

I’m done, I’m gone. Idk if I’m ever gonna come back on, but I highly doubt it’ll be to this blog. And tbh at this point, it’s just straight up unlikely, period. I’d like to think that /if/ I came back, I would at least link to the new blog here, but idk if that’ll be safe for me, so I wouldn’t count on it.

TL;DR I don’t fucking know why this is happening, I can’t even fucking read one of the posts I was @ ed in, but I’m done. I’m gone, I’m on hiatus now, probably forever.

#Anxious Fuck #I'm not suicidal #I mean I am but I'm not at risk right at this moment #I know at least one person was very sweet and concerned last time I went on hiatus #And this time is obvs more emotional #So I just wanna put that reassurance out #Cuz I'm probably not gonna come back on to check things #I'm just gone #And I don't want anybody getting worried or anything #Discourse #Guess I can officially use that tag now

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genshimada · 7 years

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Is shipping Daryl and Jesus fetishizing gay men? I've been called homophobic and fetishizing for shipping them. And when I said that that's ridiculous because I AM a gay man they just called me a faggot in a private message. I get different opinions but acting all "You homophobe!" and then calling me a slur when no one else can see it is bullshit. Hypocrisy at its finest by yours truly twd fandom.

ok well it certainly isn’t fetishizing if you literally are a gay man shipping gay men………….what the fuck??? I’m so sorry that happened to you. it’s not ok in the slightest. so many people in this goddamn fandom and anyone who screams fetishiziation like that literally fail to realize that so many of the shippers shipping them are actual fucking lgbtq individuals. EVEN THEN it’s not fucking fetishization to ship two men together. shipping is not inherently sexual. and even if there are some teenage straight girls out there writing slash for fun… it pales in comparison to ACTUAL REAL LIFE FETISHIZATION that happens every single day in the entire goddamn porn industry to VERY REAL WOMEN especially lgbtq women by STRAIGHT MALES. (not to mention that a lot of young “straight girls” tend to discover their own sexuality as being not straight through exploration of m/m f/f ships bc it helps challenge heteronormativity and get more comfortable with the idea of a same gender couple. but thats another topic). basically people need to stop fucking sending out a witch hunt for the supposed fetishization of fictional male couples as if that’s actually fucking harming real life gay men (esp white gay men) on a systematic level. like are you kidding me? you know what is actually harmful? those assholes who resort to attacking an actual gay man and other lgbtq shippers and using slurs over a ship they don’t like.

that’s the worst fucking thing about fandom policing in general. so much of it is directed towards people who are already oppressed and apart of marginalized groups, people who use fandom to escape that. it’s disgusting that this is what fandom has become.

#fandom wank #slurs tw #?? i don't know how to tag this #sorry if this doesn't make sense it's late and i just got home and this is a topic that i have strong feelings about #anonymous #answered

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cesnakai · 7 years

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seeing people writing pro-communism/pro-stalin posts (particularly the latter bc i just saw one where some guy said the “kulaks deserved it” even tho it wasn’t even entirely kulaks who were affected so what the fuck) is literally so fucking frustrating esp considering yesterday marked the anniversary of the beginning of mass deportation of innocent people from my own home country and others, in which my grandfather was included, to siberian concentration camps...like can u fucking stop with the comparisons to other govts and just consider that it was super fucking shitty the way they treated actual human beings and 99.9% of the world isn’t even aware and/or doesn’t give a shit? can u stop with ur statistics and actually maybe even go out and see for yourself the damage stalin had done before writing ur bullshit post? did i mention they never paid any reparations? and no idc if communism worked anywhere else i’d just like for there to be a fucking ounce of sympathy when u talk about these things. thanks.

#rant #communism #i better not see any argumentative replies id like to mourn in fuckin peace

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kacheeking · 7 years

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the lost years/months/days

haven’t revisited/thought about things that I’ve been reading on my own terms for a while, but this was the last time I was taking note roughly from July 2015 to May 2016:

no. 3 shit i’ve been reading: circa march 2016

Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa – Joan Jacobs Brumberg (Found this incredibly illuminating re: sainthood and 16/17th century starvation in the name of religion. Made me think more about the intersections of appetite, power, religion and how this came to a head in that age. The Victorian era sections were also really interesting, I think since I’ve never thought specifically about how food and physical appetite came into the picture even though I’ve known so much about social mores of the time and how that would have been in line? I think reading this overall, esp when they started getting closer to the modern age, I just held this sheer sense of being appalled by medical practice and how eating disorders were treated, viewed and patients subjected to unfair/uncomfortable/even dangerous power dynamics. Feel like it’s so difficult to be a woman, though it’s improving, and my feminist self balked at so much that went on in the book re: this screwed up relationship between physical appetite (sexual and food-related), madonna-whore complexes, freedoms and rebellions and how in the face of so much external pressure women turn inwards and into and on themselves.)

Living Beautifully – Pema Chodron (Last Buddhist book that we had to read for class as part of a course that aimed at understanding the conception of “self” through various lenses e.g. psychoanalytic, evolutionary-biology, religious, etc. Still struggle to reconcile a lot of Buddhist concepts with the reality of a modern nation-state framework that we have to live in. Can see its merits on an individual level but in class, was agitated when the professor seemed to dismiss/relegate discussions of privilege, and power to the sidelines, or equate sufferings that in my mind seem absolutely incompatible. Maybe I’m not “enlightened” yet? Maybe I don’t want to be.)

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (Liked this more than other sci-fi that i’ve picked up. Can see why it’s a “classic”. also read this at a time when i was very much alone/wanted the experience of solitude. want to pick up more sci-fi in future, wondering why i was biased against this genre in the past??)

Devotional Poems – Joe Hall (didn’t seem clean enough, like some phrases were superfluous/didn’t add anything to the force of a poem. a lot of imagery, sound and fury but with no object or point. cacophonous but i didn’t enjoy this collection)

Once in the West – Christian Wiman (really enjoyed this. at first was disappointed – somehow poems that have monosyllable lines or single word lines strike me as irregular/ineffective (?) but this is unwarranted bias i suppose because a lot of the poems ended up having an unexpected resonance. reading wiman and also other poets in class i think you gain an appreciation for what objectively good poetry is. people say that art is subjective but that’s some bullshit at least at the preliminary stages because being an editor for a creative literary magazine i have read a LOT of bad writing and it is clearly not subjective. anyway, what was i on? always enjoy religious/devotional poetry specifically, and most of the time it is circa 16th/17th century, but wiman combines the modernist poetic aesthetic with something enduring and that always wins me over.)

Why be happy when you can be normal? – Jeanette Winterson (read this over two days, and by that i mean it took slightly over 2+/3 hours to get through it all maybe? incredibly easy to read which was why it went so quickly. liked this a lot and want to read more by winterson)

Nobody is ever missing – Catherine Lacey (read this over three days but grew more exasperated as it progressed. think i’m done with self-indulgence/characters who i perceive as self-indulgent. there is more draw for me, now, i think, to contemplate urgencies to others instead of urgencies only to yourself. i want to read not about escapism but about handling ties to history, ties to others, ties that threaten to envelope you but also uplift. this novel was about a woman who leaves a decent life to stay in a sullen silent space of isolation and somehow i cannot accept that anymore.)

numero dos: shit i’ve been reading circa jan 2016

Completed

The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell (i liked this and the fact that david mitchell writes so comfortably and well about/when placing his narrative in irish/english contexts. re: this book, i guess we handle/respond to mortality differently. the dystopian end made me think about wanting to recycle/be more environmentally-conscious) – January

Civilization and its discontents – Sigmund Freud (read this for class, again with all freud that i’ve read, some resonates and some i call total bullshit on (everything related to his gender theory tbh).

Man’s Search for Himself – Rollo May (read this for class. every time i read something approximating insightful about self-knowledge i somehow find a crack of doubt that then spreads across the text. there was a short segment about physicality and self-consciousness that i could see be true (and even then only in my context), but i lie in the crevice and believe that the self is unknowable so maybe this class is really just an exercise in futility 4 me?)

A General Theory of Love – Lewis et. al. (read for class again. Generally found this interesting, esp because it put a scientific spin on a theory of attachment and human connection. felt like the presence of objective science, though that is debatable, gave credence to the kind of subjective emotions we have all felt, and so was comforting in some small way.)

February: The Moral Animal – Robert Wright (for class again. basically an evolutionary biology perspective/explanation of morality. Interesting to see but idk, something about attributing so many things/our choices, etc. to biology feels inherently…wrong? but maybe that’s his point.)

Mlodinow, Leonard. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (fascinating but Mlodinow jumps around a lot when writing and it makes me less inclined to believe him?)

What the Buddha Taught – Rahula (feel like the more I read about Buddhism, the more confused I am esp wrt to its metaphysical concepts. felt like a good introduction to something that’s been familiar all my life but i’ve never gotten to know intellectually. but there is something inherent about “unknowable” concepts that may be just shy of religious concepts, but still unacceptable to me)

Four Quartets – TS Eliot (probably one of the best collections of poetry that i’ve ever read. eliot goes into abstractions but grapples with the heart of the matter and there is anguish and brazen honesty and no hesitance to be ugly if that makes sense. need to reread this, probably aloud)

The Monk and the Philosopher – jean-françois revel, matthieu ricard (complicates/simplifies the ideas of buddhism? I can’t quite make up my mind. but the comparison to philosophy and subjecting it to the kind of ‘scientific’ and dialectical method was useful for me to understand it further. that is, beyond metaphors. side note: am q taken with this format of prose—conversation printed)

shit i’ve been reading circa July 2015

Not that kind of girl – Lena Dunham (felt pretentious at a lot of points) – July

The diving bell and the butterfly – Jean Dominique Bauby (quite good) – July

Madness – Marya Hornbacher (this made me cry) -July

Eat and Run – Scott Jurek (motivation to run as all books about running are) – July

AWOL on the Appalachian trail – David Miller (gets boring if you haven’t been to the AT)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollen (liked this. made me think about my choices and the exact ethical structure behind it – read also: consider the lobster by david foster wallace for a similar/alternative perspective) – August

What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami (long time coming to read this, perfect short prose about the draw of running. feel like most people who enjoy running and associate it with thinking/contemplation will get it) – August

Bad feminist – Roxane Gay (brutal at points, beautiful mostly) – August

Under the banner of heaven – Jon Krakauer (this was incredible. well-researched and comprehensive but extremely smooth narrative about mormon fundamentalism.) – September

Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann (enjoyed this) – September

Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace (title essay is a gem, the rest ranged from obscure to mildly intriguing) – September

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng (above average) – November

The People’s Republic of Amnesia – Louis Lim (emotional reporting, slated to go one way, but expectedly so) – November

History of Chinese Philosophy – Wing-Tsit Chan (need to reread, slowly, and in detail)

Drinking: A Love Story – Caroline Knapp (well-written and need to stop reading memoirs on vice/transferable behaviours) – November

Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari (ok. choice) – November

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers (liked this a lot, eggers has great arrogant style that works) – December

Slade House – David Mitchell (perfect short read. thrilling. fantasy.) – December

Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff (liked this but it ) – December

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami (took a while to get into, but enjoyed this, esp folding routines that appeared in the book into my mind. there is a quietness that steals its way through the pages when the protagonist makes his sandwiches, thinks, goes deep into dry wells) – December

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